Before going to the Kalash Valleys in May 2018, I spent some amazing days in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
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The Kalasha Valleys are valleys in Chitral District in northern Pakistan. The valleys are surrounded by the Hindu Kush mountain range.
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Due to its remoteness, the Kalash people live a traditional, rural life, which still remains pretty untouched.
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Most families rely on the sun to have electricity, don’t have running water, are self-sufficient and live in wooden shacks.
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I saw a huge contrast between the Pashtun Muslim women and the women of the Kalash valley.
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To be honest, life is quite hard there as they have very long, freezing winters and, unlike people from other parts of Pakistan, during winters, they don’t move to the cities, but they remain in the valley.
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Wearing these heavy dresses is a long-standing tradition they continue to follow.
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Bordering Afghanistan, the Kalash Valleys are located in the northwest of Pakistan, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in Chitral District.
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Pakistan’s remote northwestern hills, along the border with Afghanistan, is a cluster of three villages whose residents are still trying to preserve their language and culture in the face of advancing modernity and religious conversion.
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The tribe, known as Kalash, is said to have descended from soldiers of the army of Alexander the Great who travelled this way in 324 BCE.
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However, many scholars deny the story even though it has not been established finally yet how these people, their language, dress, and their nature-worshipping culture—in marked contrast to the Islamic culture that surrounds them — evolved and survived through the centuries.
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For centuries, the Kalash people lived in a remote mountainous region, which now spreads contiguously across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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However, Kalash people who lived in the region now under Chitral district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan carried on the legacy.
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Today, they form the smallest of Pakistan’s minority ethnic groups (numbering between 3,000 and 4,000 people) and can be found in three valleys: Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir.
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The Kalash language is said to be part of the Dardic group of Indo-Aryan languages.
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People of Kalash Valley Pakistan-Afghanistan border
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People of Kalash Valley Pakistan-Afghanistan border
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People of Kalash Valley Pakistan-Afghanistan border
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People of Kalash Valley Pakistan-Afghanistan border
Image Credit: Donell Gumiran (Instagram: donell_gumiran_photography)/Gulf News reader
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